mediately set off to meet her
husband," etc. We should be glad to know in what particular form that
"telegraphic despatch" was delivered! But such are Bourrienne's words!

To the American reader the name of Karl Friedrich Gauss may have an
unfamiliar sound. Gauss was already a youth of fourteen when Morse was
born, though the latter outlived the German mathematician by seventeen
years. Gauss was a professor of Mathematics at Goettingen, where he
passed nearly the whole of his life. In the early part of the century
he distinguished himself in astronomy and in other branches of
physical science. He then became interested in magnetic and electrical
phenomena, and in 1833, with the assistance of Wilhelm Eduard Weber,
one of his fellow-professors, who died in 1891, he erected at
Goettingen a magnetic observatory. There he began to experiment with
the subtle agent which was soon to be placed at the service of
mankind.

The observatory was constructed without the use of iron, in order that
the magnetic phenomena might be studied under favorable conditions.
Humboldt and Arago had previously constructed laboratories without
using iron--for iron is the great disturber--and from them Gauss
obtained his hint. Weber was also expert in the management of
magneto-electrical currents. Gauss, with the aid of his co-worker,
constructed a line of telegraph, and sent signals by the agency of the
magnetic current to a neighboring town. This was nearly ten years
before Morse had fully succeeded in like experimentation.

It appears that the German scientists regarded their telegraph as
simply the tangible expression or apparatus to illustrate scientific
facts and principles. It was for this reason, we presume, that no
further headway was made at Goettingen in the development of
telegraphy. It was also for the additional reason that men rarely or
never accept what is really the first demonstration and
exemplification of a new departure in scientific knowledge. Such is
the timidity of the human mind--such its conservative attachment to
the known thing and to the old method as against the new--that it
prefers to stay in the tumble-down ruin of bygone opinions and
practices, rather than go up and inhabit the splendid but unfamiliar
temple of the future.

Gauss and Weber were left with their scientific discovery; and,
indeed, Morse in the New World of practicality and quick adaptations,
was about to be rejected and cast out. The sorrows throug